strikingly vulnerable
by quorra laraex
Summary: She misses him, even when she knows she shouldn't. — Ulquiorra/Orihime


**strikingly vulnerable**

* * *

She'll always remember him.

—

It's quite hard to simply forget one who abducted you, threatened you, and nonetheless, looked at you with utter fascination and along the lines of infatuation, and deep, deep, deep intrigue. No one has ever given her that look—that dark, deceiving, unforgettable look of desperation and _need_. Those damned gazes that makes your knees weak and your eyes soft and your chest pounding; those empowering emerald orbs giving her that one look is the last vision she has of him before he blows into a swift breeze of ash.

It's that kind of vulnerable face that she's always wanted Kurosaki-kun to give her, just once, (and as much as he hopes, prays, longs for) he never does.

Ulquiorra is different from her Kurosaki-kun, though, she thinks. Ulquiorra is—no—he _was_ a menace, a cold, cruel, lonely—her thoughts take a halt, and her mind is filled with a downpour of understanding, and she remembers the time she would be in the chamber of Hueco Mundo with him; he who fed her, nurtured her, kept her alive, even when Aizen had ordered for her execution. And she wonders where he is in this mess of a universe and if he's alright and if he's still alone, and a knot begins to form in her stomach at the thought. He's gone, spread in different areas the wind takes his ashes, and there's nothing she can do to reassure herself that he's happy where he is. He can feel, after all. She knows it, even when he's locked all source of emotions from his head, it's still in him, and it's apparent to the two of them right before he leaves her.

—

They all see him as a monster, but they'll never understand. Ishida-kun prods her to stop, to move on, and that he's made her psychotic and slowly bizarre. Kurosaki-kun dismisses it, still enraged by feeling defeated and saved by the enemy. They treat her differently, as if she's been traumatized, and she's sick of it.

She doesn't say a thing about it.

It's not her nature to ever talk back, to yell, to harm—physically or emotionally.

Only one has seen the darkness in her actually escape, and she shakes at the memory of the time she's been so enraged, she had the power to lift her hand and slap him right across his face. She was sweating, her skin having that tinge of salt, and her eyebrows were furrowed and her heart was aching. But she also remembers how good it felt; to let her emotions get the better of her—to release that surge of hormones for once. Only he had the power to unlock all of who she was, that she was too afraid to show to the real world.

He may have been her imprisonment, but oddly, at the same time, he was something no one else could be; her escape.

—

Orihime misses him.

She knows she shouldn't. How could she long for someone so stupendously evil, who once threatened her life and even the lives of her friends? And she thinks maybe Ishida-kun is right, she could be going insane. Maybe it was the little hopeful voice in the back of her head, hidden beneath everything that been thought of, that tells her maybe he was just lost, lost in the world of despair and emptiness.

And when she cries because of this, it's not of pity. It's purely empathetic, and she wishes she could help him. She wants him to be alive, so she could guide him and teach him in ways no one did.

—

There are times she goes mad, she's convinced she is, rather.

She'll forget to eat. Once, for three days, she doesn't eat. She doesn't prepare food or buy groceries—not even those scrumptious old jelly filled croissants that she used to dip into tomato or bean paste. Her hunger is dissolved, gone, forgotten.

It isn't as if anyone notices, anyway.

Every morning, she pulls a brush through her sun-burnt copper tresses, changes into her grey uniform, and walks to school with a bright smile. During the seven to eight minutes that the school has left until the first bell signaling her class to begin, she walks into her study room and greets her friends good morning. She takes notes in her class, answers the problems, and reads literature like an average student should. At lunch, she'll go to the library instead of eating a meal with her friends on the freshly mowed grass next to the large oak tree. She'll say she wants to catch up on homework, or do extra credit, or just study for an upcoming exam—anything.

She's convinced she's a great actress since no one questions her or asks if she's alright, because she surely seems alright. But she thinks a checkup would still be nice.

No one bothers.

She goes to the counselor once, maybe twice, or so, but her tongue's tied because she then realizes she can't speak of anything. It's against policy, and it's logic that she can't just spill the word on ghosts existing, and death gods, and how she was kidnapped by someone dead, and how she has the power to heal others without using a first aid kit. Her counselor would believe she had gone mental.

Everyone used to think she used to have this fantastic imagination before she's been exposed to everything. She smiles politely at the thought, but as much as she wishes her innocence hadn't died, she knows the truth.

—

There are times when she questioned why she's become so undeniably dead when she's at home and she wonders why those she's had close bonds with always leave her.

—

It is the days after she sees him, when things slowly begin to fall together.

It's dark inside her apartment, but the dim lamp on her left is enough illumination for her to see him, standing above her as she lies on the mattress on the floor. She pinches her arm without pivoting her glance elsewhere to make sure this is real and she wants this moment to last. He stares down at her and she feels frozen under her sheets, as if he's got her paralyzed. He closes his eyes in some sort of relief or reluctance, and a hint of a smile cascaded the corner of his dark lips.

She stutters his name and his eyes are once again locked into her liquid brown pools.

"You should eat."

Orihime becomes nervous at his statement. She sits up and crosses her legs as she recognizes the espada uniform on him. His eyes don't leave her. "I'm not hungry."

"Your health is important," he mutters incomprehensibly, but she catches it. "I have to keep you alive."

She almost grins, "Aizen's orders?"

He eyes her steadily, recalling their conversation now and from Hueco Mundo. "This time, it's mine."

He leans down, eye-level with hers, and brings his cold fingers to her chin where he slowly lifts to bring her face evenly in front of his. She whispers his name once more—it's the only thing she can bring herself to do, before he continues.

"Take care of yourself."

The scene reminds her of the time he reached out for her, sputtering something about the heart and how he's found his. Those forest green eyes were—_are_—strikingly vulnerable against hers, and a second they're there, and in another, gone.

She wakes up in the morning wondering if it had all been just a mere dream, until she turns to her side to find a croissant of various sweet pastes on a plate resting on her bedside table, and for the first time, in the longest time, she can't help but really smile.

—

She learns to grow, to embrace, and to move.

And she knows the truth; because Orihime _had_ taught him, she _had_ guided him, she _had_ helped him, and he _is_ happy. Because without her, he wouldn't have learned to grow, to embrace what he's had all along, and to move forward with it.

It was all in the heart, and they held each other's.

* * *

**a/n:** please review! feedback is appreciated. i honestly don't enjoy writing from the girl's perspective. but it's pretty difficult to write from ulquiorra's perspective since he's dead. so yeah. i hope you liked this :-)


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